For now the day bleeds
by ImGonnaBuildCastles
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Ange reflects on having a baby


Thursday 24th May 1990

'Come on Ange, one last push.'

'I can't' the teenager cries, feeling like she's being split in two. 'I can't do this.' She's full on sobbing now, the gas and air feel like it's stopped working now. She knew it would be painful, she had forgotten how painful though. She just wants it to stop, she'll do anything to make it stop.

'Ange, I promise it's one more.' This wasn't the plan, she wasn't supposed to be early. Her mum was supposed to be back from her trip to London. She wasn't supposed to be alone, yet she is. Like she has been the whole pregnancy, like she had been for the last few years. She's destined to be alone. Baring down, she does what she's told. She lost track of how many people are in the room, and who is who, there are a number of different people. Going into labour at thirty-three weeks wasn't the plan, if the baby survives the birth she is going straight to the neonatal intensive care. She will be all alone, until Ange is allowed up. That's if she makes it up, she knew the facts from when she had her boy. Thirty-three weeks isn't good even she, the worlds crappiest mother, new that.

Suddenly, it's over. She feels the body slip out of her, silent. She closes her eyes and suddenly everyone leaps into action, yet she knows what is going to happen. She knows she isn't going to come out of this with a live baby.

She failed, yet again, as a mother. She couldn't deliver a healthy baby, she killed her child. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tries to hide the tears about to fall.

'Ange, you have a girl.' That's when the sob decides to let go.

'Is she alive?' She, eventually, manages to choke out, scared of what the answer might be, 'My wee girl?'

'She is, she's going to be taken to NICU but she's in the best place possible. We are going to deliver the placenta.'

'I don't want her to be alone.' She sobs, 'please don't let her die on her own.'

'Hey, no one is talking about dying. I promise, once you've delivered the placenta, and you are stitched up, I'll take you up to NICU myself.'

'I don't want her to be alone.'

'I'll bring you up straight after.'

'I want to go with her, she can't be alone. She's only little.'

'Jess.' Ruth the midwife calls, a younger woman comes out of the crowd, she looks like she is barely out of nursing school. 'Will you go and stay with the baby, it doesn't seem like we are going to get anywhere with Ange if the baby is alone.'

'Sure.'

'See, Jess will be with her. '

'Thank you.' She whispers, bracing herself for her last part of the delivery. To Ange, it seems like years for the placenta to be delivered. She just wants to get on and see the baby, before she dies.

'What if I don't love her?'

'You will.'

'What if I don't?' She rubs her hands over her face. 'With my boy, I gave him up. What if I don't love her?'

'Why did you give him up?'

'Because I couldn't give him the life he deserved.' She answers truthfully, almost ashamed to admit it.

'Then you are already a good mum.' Ange shakes her head.

'No, this is different. What if I don't love her. With my boy, I liked his dad. With her, it was rape and I was too much of a coward to have an abortion. What if I can't look at her the same.' Ruth stops the wheelchair, coming around to Ange's front.

'You will. What you need to remember is that she is YOUR baby. She isn't his. You have to think of it like that. You were worried, when she was born, that should show you something about the way you feel about her.'

'You think?'

'I know.' They get into the empty lift, the one her daughter would have been in barely an hour before. It made no sense to her that they were on different floors from one another, but hey she's just a patient. 'She will probably be covered in wires and she won't look like what you are expecting, but just know that it is a good thing.'

'Okay.' She whispers, looking down at her hands. 'I wanted my mum here, to go with her, so she's not alone. Except she's on her way back from London, she's had to cut her work trip short.'

'I'm sure she can't wait to meet your baby girl.'

'You think she will be alive?'

'Hey, Ange we are thinking positive. I don't want any more death talk when we get out of this lift, happy thoughts only.' As if on cue, the lift doors open and she is brought into another corridor. 'Let's go and meet your baby.'

Whatever Ange was expecting, it wasn't this. The room was loud and bright, the machines keeping the babies alive, with anxious families around them. Except her baby won't have a family, she doesn't have a father and she will only have her and her mum, her siblings are still at uni. She knows that they will be back, her mum has probably already tried to phone them, not that it would do much use. Her brother is in Bath and her sister in Leeds, both hours away. Plus, its exam season soon and they will be busy with that.

'There she is.' Ruth whispers to Ange, as they go to the box that has the midwife there.

'Thank you.' She whispers to the midwife, 'thank you for staying with her.'

'It's okay.' She smiles, 'I'll be back on the ward. I'll see you later.' She sits there just watching her, watching her breath. A welcome relief, she made it through the birth and she's alive. She would say that it's a relief she is breathing, but shes not, a machine is doing it for her. Ange wants someone to pinch her, she wasn't supposed to be alive. She was supposed to be payback for her boy.

She had thought this baby would be a boy, she was going to call him Ollie, Oliver Benjamin Godard. The fact she was a girl had thrown her off, a welcome surprise. Maybe if she had been a boy it would have added to her guilt, for getting rid of him. Like this baby was replacing him. Or maybe he would turn out like him, a huge fear of hers. She's still worried that she won't love her, because of him. She wasn't strong enough for a termination, but she wasn't sure if she would be able to give another child up.

She often wondered what he was like? Was he like her or him? He looked like her when he was first born, but everyone knows how much babies change in the first few years. She wondered when he took his first steps, his first words. She got the first smile and she will forever hold onto that. She wondered what Carole and Barry were like as parents, hoping they gave him everything she couldn't, everything she wanted him to have, everything he deserved.

Maybe she should have tried to find Jimmy, but what use would that have done? She knows that it wouldn't have changed a thing, the distance was too vast, and she didn't know what he would have said anyway. She did what she thought was best, something she still thinks was the best option. In all honesty, she would never know if it was the best thing to-do because she will never know the boy, she just hoped he'd find it in him to forgive him for that decision, that he wouldn't hate her. It wasn't out of spite or anything other than her overwhelming love for him that she gave him up.

It had been in the dark hours that she had made the decision, she had already talked about it with her mum and she told her not to make any rash decisions, but the baby was colicky, he wasn't feeding, and she looked at him and knew that she wasn't what he deserved. As a mother, she should have been able to provide for him, and she knew she couldn't. The reality of her situation was that she was, barely, a teenager who was skint, who couldn't look after a baby. She is still that teenager, but she knew she had to be the best for the baby inside the incubator. She had to be able to-do this because she was a miracle, she was a second chance, if she survived. To Ange, that was a very big if, with premature babies there is a lot of questions, lots of uncertainty and she was willing to fight anyone to give her the best chance she possibly could.

As she watches her, she doesn't notice a couple more figures appear behind her, very gently they get her attention. She listens as the first one talks about her daughter's condition, uncertainty laced heavily in his voice. The next one, a woman, introduces herself as a lactation consultant. She asks if she was planning to breastfeed, explaining the benefits, as if Ange didn't already know. She had been here before, except it seemed almost more important this time round.

She agrees as they talk through the options, deciding that she should probably try to pump her milk for the girl, as its better for her. Following her to a room, the room that is specially dedicated for mums to express milk, she is told what to-do. It's different this time around, knowing why she's doing it. She is doing it to give her baby the best chance of survival, following the advice of the consultant. When she's done, it's explained that there is a tube directly to her baby's stomach, she doesn't have the necessary reflexes to be able to feed, so she has to have it fed directly to her stomach.

Her mum makes it back to Glasgow that night, Ange having gone into labour at 10AM and the baby had been born by 1PM, a much quicker labour than with her son, she was in labour for over 26 hours. 26 hours of pure agony and it didn't get much better. She had tried to get the first train back, but they had all been up the creek, talking her hours to eventually be able to get home and drive to the hospital.

Her sister visits the next day, apparently, she had Friday's off. Ange thought that she was lying but she knew she wanted to see the baby. She had gotten much closer with Lucy since Matt moved to uni, that year made all the difference. Ange can tell she's shocked at the baby, doing her best to mask it as they watch the machines that are keeping her alive, something that she had become background noise to her mother.

Her brother visits two weeks later, when the monitors had been reduced. When it looked more certain that she was going to come home, there was still a chunk of uncertainty, but the baby was getting stronger every single day. He had been in the height of exam season, although he had confided in his mother that he was worried about seeing the baby, that he wanted to be strong for her. He had become the man of the house when he was fifteen and their dad passed away, he was the one who was strong. He wanted to be that man but seeing a little baby that could be dying was something he couldn't be strong for. Not that he didn't want to be.

Ange's grandparents had been visitors, coming every other day. Spending time staring at the baby, because what really could they do? Nothing. They were there for their granddaughter who usually had her head buried in some school work.

By the third week Ange had started trying non-nutritive feeding, during the time that the hospital had started Kangaroo care with the baby. The baby would lie on her skin with just a nappy on, after she had expressed all her milk, letting her just lie there, in preparation to, eventually, learning how to feed. It was the first steps towards the baby coming home. The first time Ange allowed herself to think about the sleepless nights, the late-night cuddles. The idea that she will be home, so near, yet so far.

The sound of the machines had become 'normal' to the teenager, who didn't have a clue what they meant. All she knew, and all she had to know, was that the machines needed to stay at a steady place, over the period she was in hospital she had heard enough machines beeping so fast, too fast, before falling silent, families who wouldn't go home with a baby.

In the fourth week, they mastered the art of breastfeeding. The final step in the discharge from hospital. The first time Ange was able to dress her in clothes that her mother had picked out, ready for her to go home. The baby girl of A Godard was finally released from NICU, the day of her departure she informed the teams that she had, in fact, finally picked a name for the child, explaining how she didn't want to jinx it until the baby could come home. Baby girl of A Godard became Chloe Godard, the daughter of Ange Godard. The moment she left the hospital, she had a name. Ange registered her the following day, now she was a "proper" person.


End file.
